Art History - Blog Posts
How would you describe the art style of the fashion design illustrations? I love the antiquarian looking style
hello my dear! 💖
what an interesting question! 💕💕 either fortunately or unfortunately, you asked either the best or worst person to talk about this lmao 😅😅 as an art history phd student, pretty much all I do is analyze images, so I definitely have some Thoughts™️
first, I'll say that style varies hugely based on time period and publication. even within decades, I've seen a wide variety of styles used, so if you had particular images in mind that you wanted me to talk about, feel free to let me know and I'd be thrilled to discuss those more specifically! ☺️☺️
because there is such a diverse range of stylistic approaches to illustrating fashion plates/images, I'm hesitant to make any sweeping generalizations here, but I will pick out a few themes that I've seen come up a lot:
2d medium vs. 3d object – one of the key features of fashion plates is that, ultimately, they are trying to sell you a garment/style. of course, clothing is three-dimensional, and especially when looking at things like bustled garments, they take up a lot of space in real life that is difficult to represent in a 2d medium. because of this "conflict" between the necessity of depicting the garment and the realities of the medium of drawing/print, we tend to see some odd positioning of the figures. they might be awkwardly bent or twisting in order to show off both a bodice and a bustle at the same time (the figure on the left here is a good example). we also see some "flattening" of the picture plane, wherein the placement of a normally voluminous feature (like a bustle) doesn't really make sense in a naturalistic space, but rather is almost parallel to the chest/bodice of the figure, when in real life it would project backwards rather than weirdly sideways (you can see this in almost any 1880s fashion plate featuring dresses, but this one is a nice example). [also please note that this is not a condemnation of these choices, but rather an analysis of why they're necessary in this medium]
ye olde photoshoppe – connecting to my first point, fashion plates are trying to sell you something, and therefore their artists have incentive to make that product look as attractive/appealing as possible. I do get comments from time to time about how "people don't look like that" or "that's not how bodies work," which, while true, also elide the fact that these artists are not necessarily trying to be naturalistic in their depiction of the human body – they're trying to show you the most marketable version of the human body as determined by the cultural values of their day. just as today we might see impossibly thin models on magazine covers or clearly fake thigh gaps in online retail, so too are the creators of these fashion plates embellishing and exaggerating the human form to make it as appealing as possible to consumers – they're selling a fantasy, not a reality
non-specificity – another thing that is fairly common across historical fashion plates is the non-specificity of facial features on the figures portrayed. if you feel so inclined, take a scroll through the blog and compare the faces of the figures in the illustrations (obviously this does not work in the same way for photographs). you'll likely find that you keep seeing the same face over and over again. what's more, that face has almost no distinctive features, and is almost doll-like in its perfection. given what we've already discussed, this isn't a surprise, since fashion plates are meant to sell garments, and therefore a portrait-like rendering of a specific model isn't really the goal. the figures in fashion plates essentially are dolls – they are meant to be "dressed" in whichever style is being sold, and visually appealing yet non-specific enough to potentially interest a large population of possible consumers
whew! okay I will wrap up my ramblings now, but I hope this was at least a little bit helpful or perhaps mildly interesting! ☺️☺️ as you can see, I love doing this kind of visual analysis, so (as I mentioned above) if you have specific images you wanted me to talk about stylistically, feel free to let me know!! ☺️💕 and thank you again for this great question! 💖💖
if you've made it to the end, thanks for reading my ramblings, and let me know what y'all think about the stylistic features of fashion plates if you have thoughts! 🥰🥰
The Reader, Alfred Stevens. 1860.